


On the Autonomy of Automatons

by Musings_of_a_Monster



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Internalized Victim Blaming, Other, Past Sexual Assault, Sexual Slavery, Spoilers for Destiny 2, Swearing, my brain vomited this up so I'm putting it here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 23:58:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13422363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musings_of_a_Monster/pseuds/Musings_of_a_Monster
Summary: A piece of Cayde's past is dug up that gives Ikora and Zavala pause. Cayde tells them a story without heroes.Or: the time Cayde was coerced into sex work and it was as bad as it sounds





	On the Autonomy of Automatons

**Author's Note:**

> The rating is up because I'm basing this on what I read as a teen. I don't consider this particularly graphic, but watch the warnings.

            If Cayde were being honest with himself, the fact that Zavala held _that_ data in his hand when he and Ikora approached Cayde made him feel ill. But, Cayde was frequently _not_ honest with himself and flippant indignation was an easier emotion to deal with.

            “Some information was brought to our attention…” Zavala had said, and then extrapolated. Going by the _near complete_ absence of change in either Zavala’s _or_ Ikora’s expressions, Cayde figured they’d both looked it over beforehand.

            “Have you spoken about this with anyone?” Ikora had asked, and Cayde knew _anyone_ meant a shrink of one kind or another, “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

            They were both clearly shocked and concerned and their expressions made Cayde want to puke. Instead, he crossed his arms and rolled his shoulders back in a shrug. “So, I was a whore. What’s your point?”

            “Were you?” Zavala looked Cayde dead in the eye, and lightly tipped the data card in his hand, “Because that’s not what this looks like.”

            Cayde plucked it from the commander’s hand, “Yeah, it _looks_ like it’s none of your goddamn business.” He snapped it like a tortilla chip. “Anymore invasive questions? Or can I get back to work?”

            Ikora sighed, “Cayde. We’re not judging—”

            “I don’t care!” He turned to walk away.

            “ _Cayde!_ ”

            He turned to see Zavala taking his customary _you-listen-to-me_ stance. “You will _not_ storm out of this conversation.”

            “It doesn’t really feel like a _conversation_ to me,” Cayde said, “It’s more like you two want to have a conversation and I don’t.”

            “These things can have lasting psychological effects,” Ikora said, carefully but firmly.

            “Oh my God,” Cayde put his fingers to his temples, “This isn’t somethin’ that just happened! It was _centuries_ ago! Before we ever met. Before I was a guardian, even.” He shook his head in disbelief, “Who told you?”

            Ikora and Zavala looked at each other. Ikora spoke, “A data-mining AI. It was one of the files they found in a cache originating from somewhere in Australia.”

            “Who else knows?”

            “No one, to our knowledge,” Zavala said.

            Cayde nodded and turned again, “Good. Keep it that way.”

 

 

            He wasn’t trying to be quiet. He made it fairly obvious he wasn’t trying to be quiet, because he didn’t want a face full of void magic.

            “Good evening, Cayde,” Ikora said, setting down her book. She liked the old-fashioned types; physical copies with woven vinyl pages and plastisteel covers. Not as old-fashioned as his modified copy of _Treasure Island_ , but still pretty old. “Would you like some coffee?”

            Cayde knew that _she_ knew he didn’t actually need coffee. Not with both his Exo and Hunter insomnia. But Ikora liked coffee, and she was always a gracious host, even to coworkers who just popped out of the shadows with no invitation whatsoever.

            “I’ll have some if you’re havin’ some,” he said. He hopped down from the window and took a seat across from Ikora, who waved a hand to indicate he was welcome to sit. In a chair. Not on her table. “You know if Zavala is still up? I think it’s story time.”

 

            “I don’t remember most of it,” Cayde said. He watched the steam rise from his cup of cream and sugar and a little splash of coffee besides. Cayde only ever drank coffee without cream or sugar when he was trying to impress someone. It took a lot more than taking one’s coffee black to impress Ikora or Zavala (he’d tried it in the earlier years, but it had absolutely no effect besides literally leaving a bitter taste in his mouth, so).

            Zavala and Ikora waited patiently for Cayde to continue.

            “I’m told I was there for thirty years, but after my system was wiped, I lost somethin’ like ninety-eight percent of my memory. Most of what I know is secondhand, or from a journal I wrote in about once or twice a month. Almost every entry was about how I was fucked by some public figure and how they rated on a scale of one to ten,” Cayde paused, “The average was about three. Though someone apparently scored an eight. I kinda wish I could remember that one.”

            He took a sip of “coffee” before continuing. “What I _do_ remember of my employment there was overwhelmingly unpleasant so I’m just gonna skip over that.”

            Even as Cayde spoke flashes of having his head shoved down while blowing a client (he hated having his head shoved down, _hated_ it) or some prick shoving a cock into an orifice before Cayde was ready or clipping cum-soaked genital augments on and off between jobs exploded in his mind like grenades. This slowed Cayde down a bit.

            “If I may ask a question…” Zavala began.

            “Shoot.”

            “How…did you come to be so,” the commander’s eyes narrowed as he considered which word to use, “employed?”

            “Sold off,” Cayde answered, “Don’t know how much glimmer changed hands but it had better have been a _lot_.”

            Interestingly, it was Ikora who maintained her composure while Zavala balked. “They had no right…”

            Cayde raised a finger, “Actually, they did. Kinda. Exos weren’t considered people then, unless they’d been human or awoken first. Which I was, but I guess the auctioneers didn’t know or didn’t care. And you didn’t take the word of a machine, ya know?” There was one, brief recollection of someone waving him off when he protested the sale. Of being seized by hired muscle and forced away. His grip tightened around his mug. “So, I and a bunch of other exos became public fucktoys.” He could remember looking around, cold and numb, his system going into shock to avoid registering what the damning cry of _sold_ meant for him. The mug he was holding shattered. Cayde looked down at the mess he’d made in mute horror. Then snapped back to the world around him, “Oh, shit. Ikora, I’m so sorry, I—”

            Ikora held up a hand, “It’s alright. I’ll get a towel.”

            She stood, and left Zavala and Cayde in awkward silence.

            After Cayde had cleaned up (which he’d insisted on doing himself), he went on. “I’m sure there were plenty of exos—and humans, and awoken—who were perfectly fine with sex work, but I highly doubt any of them were at the brothel that had me. Our pimp was an absolute rat-bastard. We had to be ready at any time, day or night, and we were lucky if we got any warnin’ at all. That asshole couldn’t even be bothered to give us five minutes’ heads up.

            “I wish I could say I did somethin’ bold to get out. Some darin’ escape, or at least bitin’ someone’s dick off.”

            Zavala winced slightly, but Ikora had the faintest hint of a smirk.

            Cayde put his hands up, palms out, to his shoulders, “The truth is, the authorities found us. Nothin’ illegal about a brothel in itself, but tax evasion and suspected coercion of converted exos catches up to ya.” He lowered his hands, and folded them together over his lap. He didn’t look at his coworkers. “A few of us, includin’ me, were on a list. It had the names and identifyin’ information of former humans and awoken. The best I did was tell them about every exo there who’d claimed to have been converted. Seein’ as the brothel’s days were over, the authorities figured what the hell. They let them go on my word.

            “I also tried to tell them that any exo there could have been a conversion. And it’s true—the lists were far from exhaustive. I didn’t really care if they were converts or not, wasn’t _their_ fault they ended up in that hellhole. But I knew the powers that were _did_ care, so I played along.”

            Cayde closed his eyes, “The ones that acted _sufficiently_ human or awoken were released. Most of them were not. They were auctioned off to other brothels or as personal servants. I tried to follow up on a few of them.” He opened his eyes and looked at Ikora and Zavala, “That’s where I ran into trouble. I guess I found out a little too much, and so I got wiped.”

            He ran a hand over his face. “It was an amateur job. Don’t know what woulda happened to me if some guy hadn’t come by and scared ’em off. He tried to help me figure out who the hell I was, but fresh out of a wipe, my brain function was shot. By the time I remembered what I’d even been doin’ there, the trail was cold. Never did find out what happened to those exos.

            “Aaand that’s it,” Cayde said, leaning back into his seat. With all the subtlety of snapping a book shut, he added, “The end.”

            Ikora had her elbows on her knees and her clasped hands under her chin. “You said it wasn’t the other exos’ fault they were there. You understand it wasn’t _your_ fault either, don’t you?”

            “Yeah, that’s real sweet of you to say,” Cayde said, “but given my track record, I’m reasonably certain I fucked up somewhere along the line.” He paused, “No pun intended.”

            “I don’t care how badly you _fucked up_ ,” Zavala said, his expression deepening into a frown, “You didn’t deserve that.”

            Cayde raised a finger, “I didn’t say I _deserved_ it; I said it was my _fault_. There’s a difference. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

            The look of incredulity on Zavala’s face was priceless, but before he could respond, Ikora put a hand on his shoulder. She looked at Cayde, “Thank you for telling us, Cayde. It couldn’t have been easy, and we appreciate it.”

            He stood up, brushing imaginary lint off himself, “Yeah, well, ya kinda forced my hand. Anyway, thanks for the coffee. Sorry about the mug. And the towel.” Cayde hopped back up on the windowsill. “G’night,” he said over his shoulder, and then he was gone.

 

            “What?” Cayde opened his door and jolted slightly when he saw Ikora standing there. “Oh, Ikora! Hey, uh,” he drew the door back and pushed his body outward to better block her view of his living quarters, “I’d invite you in, but it’s _kind_ of a disaster area right now.”

            It was always a disaster area. And full of contraband. _So much_ contraband.

            “That’s okay,” Ikora said, holding up a data card that Cayde eyed warily. The last time one of the Vanguard had showed him a data card had been the better part of a week ago, and he'd snapped _that_ one in half. “I did some digging after the data-mining in Australia. I found something I thought you’d want to know.”

            She placed the card in his palm and closed his hand over it. Before taking her own hands away, Ikora met Cayde’s gaze. “You made a difference, Cayde.”

            Too puzzled to do much else, Cayde just looked down at the hand that held the data card as Ikora walked away. The movement triggered his higher brain functions. “Thank you!” he called after her, and because he didn’t know what _else_ to say, “See you at work.”

 

            The data card had information about an exo named Sharona-17. She wasn’t a conversion, as far as anyone could tell. Her form had been built to serve as an instrument of pleasure and little else. She had never been given a choice in what function she wanted to fill, and no chance to do anything besides. Despite being in possession of a mind as complex as any human, she was given all the regard of a toaster oven. No one spoke to Sharona except to command; no one touched Sharona except for the purpose of their own gratification.

            She had been one of the exos working alongside Cayde.

            Sharona had been unable to pass for a converted human or awoken, and had been auctioned off. But instead of being bought by a different brothel, she had been purchased by a bunch of free-lance exos and their allies who had pooled their funds to buy as many of the former brothel exos as possible. Sharona had been one of the lucky ones.

            In her new life, she was not forced to take on any client she did not choose. She did not perform any act she did not consent to. And when she ultimately decided to walk away, she was given her last paycheck and wished well.

            The data read that she became an exo rights worker, an advocate that strove toward allowing exos to choose their professions and livelihoods. It was not, Sharona said, about whether or not the tasks asked of exos were _humane_ , but whether or not the exos were given a _choice_.

            “That’s a funny word,” Sharona was reported to have said, “ _humane_. In the fashion of a human. That was, and is, the litmus test for so many of us. I knew an exo once. He said he was a conversion; he might have been, I don’t know. I only know that he tried to teach me and several other exos to behave as humans, or awoken, when the officials who brought down our brothel were set to interview us. He showed me many things I was not able to replicate to the officials’ satisfaction. But some, who were absolutely _not_ conversions, did.

            “I don’t know what happened to him, but he thought even those of us who were constructed deserved a choice. He tried to free us the only way he knew how: by giving us some value in the eyes of the human and awoken government.

            “It was flawed, of course. It suggested an exo was not person enough without a prior life as a human or an awoken. But it was a flawed plan to fit a flawed system. If I could see him now, I would thank him for the attempt. And I would tell him that I have found a better way, and will carry on from here.”

 

            The next day, Cayde set a small plate above his bed. A quote was inscribed upon its surface. Something important. Something he wanted to remember.

>             _And I would tell him that I have found a better way, and will carry on from here._
> 
> _\-- Sharona-17_


End file.
